CLEVELAND – Ohio and football were perhaps the only things Paul Brown had in common with Bill Willis and Marion Motley.

But it was enough to set a course for the Cleveland Browns and professional football for years to come.

Brown knew both men through the game. As Massillon high school coach, who built an empire with the Tigers while incorporating the talents of black players, he handed Motley his only three prep defeats at Canton McKinley. Brown would also coach him during World War II, at Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago.

As the Ohio State coach in 1941, Brown discovered Willis, a Columbus East product. Bill's older brother Claude had been rebuffed by the Buckeyes when they were coached by Francis Schmidt, purely for racial reasons. Brown was color blind by comparison.

"My dad went with another guy to talk to Paul," said Bill's son Clem Willis, in Jean Jacques-Taylor's Ohio State Alumni piece, "The Groundbreaker." "Paul said he could play at Ohio State (but) the other guy couldn't because he had a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. (Brown) didn't want his players smoking."

After World War II, most figured Brown would return to coach Ohio State. But a $25,000 offer to coach the fledgling Cleveland Browns in the new All-American Football Conference was too lucrative to ignore. So, Brown went about finding the best players he could, regardless of pigmentation.

Integration was in the wind in those heady days of fresh peace. Black troops served with distinction in the service, making it senseless to bar their talents in professional sports.

In fact, the Los Angeles Coliseum refused to allow the Rams to play there unless the franchise integrated. So, to adhere to the edict, the team signed Kenny Washington on March 21, 1946. UCLA teammate Woody Strode was signed on May 7. They were the first two black players in the NFL since 1933, but neither man was anything more than a bit contributor.

Meanwhile, Brown was stocking his franchise during training camp with the best players in the country, his two former stars among them. Willis was first.

News of the Rams' signing was still fresh and Willis was hoping to connect with Brown. In later years the coach said he was working behind the scenes to finesse the situation. There are a number of different stories about the circumstances that brought Willis to him, but when the details were completed, Brown never let him go.

The story is equally unclear about Motley.

Brown said in his autobiography, "Marion Motley was all too available for a man of his talent. I called Oscar Barkey, a friend from Canton, and asked him to drive Marion to our training camp and have him ask for a tryout. I felt that was the best way to handle the situation ... in light of the potential publicity, because there was nothing unusual in a player coming to his former coach and asking him for a chance to play," Brown noted. "No other professional football team was interested in him at the time because he had not played enough in college (at Nevada) or in the service to attract any attention. That was their loss."

Motley said he wrote Brown and was initially rejected. However, that changed quickly after Willis arrived.

"(Paul Brown) asked me how I would like to come up and try out for the football team. (Bill) Willis had made the ball club, see, and they had to have someone to go along with him," Motley said in the story "Nevada Athlete," by Shelby Harris. "I was only supposed to be a roommate for Willis."

Willis signed with the Browns on Aug. 7, 1946 for $4,000. Brown asked him to keep it quiet, he would reveal the news at the appropriate time. Three days later, the Browns signed Motley to the same deal, a year before Jackie Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. There was little doubt the Ohio prep football products belonged with the best.

They were both Ohio schoolboy legends. Willis was also an All-American at Ohio State, and the duo's championship exploits would engender home-state support for the franchise that exists to this day.

To Brown, the fact they were racial pioneers was merely a byproduct of their skillset. Their signing did not create controversy in Cleveland. Brown wouldn't allow race to be a problem that year, or any ensuing season for that matter.

"In every opening speech at the beginning of the season (Brown) would say, 'We have four or five colored (we were colored then) fellows playing. Anybody that feels that they can't play with them, come to my office and you will get your train ticket home,' " Browns fullback Emerson Cole said in "Gridiron Gauntlet." "He said that every year. Of course, nobody took him up on it."

Brown couldn't control what happened on the road though, and tried to prepare both players for the bigotry they might face.

"Paul talked to Bill and myself and he told us that people were going to be laying for us," Motley said in "Iron Men," by Stuart Leuthner. " 'They're going to call you names and they're going to try to hurt you. It's up to you to take it and to take whatever they give out.' It was rough ... but if either Willis or myself had been hotheads and gotten into fights and things like that, it would have put things back 10 years. Blacks would have never been accepted like they were."

The Browns went 12-2 in the 1946 regular season, with only one incident. Death threats were reported prior to the Dec. 3 game in Miami. Unwilling to risk their personal safety, Brown kept Willis and Motley home, and the Browns rolled to a 34-0 win anyway.

Motley (at fullback and linebacker) and Willis (at guard and defensive tackle) were key cogs in a team that rolled to an AAFC championship, beating the New York Yankees 14-9 in the title game. The Browns won all four AAFC crowns before joining the NFL in 1950 — and winning the championship that season, too.

Willis was an All-League player in seven of his eight years as a pro in Cleveland and was in a title game every season. Motley was the AAFC's career rushing leader and was All-League in his first five seasons as a pro. Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman proclaimed him the greatest football player in the history of the sport in 1970.

Both men were Hall of Famers. As roommates they shared their struggles and formed a lifetime bond.

When Motley was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968, the second black player so honored, Bill presented him and shared the story of their trailblazing legacy. When Willis was inducted in 1977, after his enshrinement in the College Football Hall of Fame, he asked Brown to present him.

"Paul, I am honored to have you to be my presenter today because, after all, that's the way it began 31 years ago," Bill Willis said during the ceremony in Canton. "I have always said that Paul Brown changed my life. If it had not been for P.B., I am certain I would not be here receiving this honor today. It was he who afforded me the opportunity to play pro football when it was not the popular thing to do. I was the first black to play in the All-American (Football) Conference, and Paul arranged for me to play without fanfare. He simply gave me the opportunity to make that ballclub of his."